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05/29/2008

It's been a busy ten days or so preparing to receive the puppies and then the actual event of bringing them home and getting into early puppy rearing. We had to put up a secure pen for them outside, complete with heavy wire mesh covering over the top. We have a breeding pair of bobcats which frequent the close environs and these pups needed a bobcat-proof enclosure to make sure they wouldn't become cat food.

The black tri-color is now named Buck (after that noble creature in Jack London's The Call of the Wild). He is gregarious, more than a little domineering and whines when left alone. He is more vocal and will probably be a very good watchdog.

The female blue merle has tentatively been christened Honey. She is very self-reliant and holds her own in their rough puppy play, though Buck outweighs her by 20%. She's the brains to his brawn. She's agile and can turn on a dime, often eluding his full frontal assaults.

Chewing is their great pastime (aside from sleeping) and they've bloodied both my forearms with their needle-sharp teeth. Potty training is going well but, of course, she's a little ahead of the curve on this. He has a tendency to try to sneak off and leave a surprise under a table or in a corner.

These pictures show the pups at age eight weeks. The last picture looks like I've lined them up and told them to bend over for inspection after potty time. In fact, it began as a wholly different picture, but by the time the shutter had clicked this was the shot yielded. I took sixty-some pictures over thirty minutes and most of them came out as blurs or there were no dogs in the frame by the time the shutter clicked.